Although this doesn't seem like rocket science, it makes a huge difference.

Drink a full glass of water before each meal. This will help stretch your stomach and prepare it for eating. It will also start the signaling process that lets your brain know that you should stop eating.

Throughout the day, keep drinking water. Americans are chronically dehydrated. Your urine's color should be clear or very light yellow. That's when you know you have hydrated enough. (Diabetics see note below)

What should you drink?

Only water. Stop drinking soft drinks, alcohol, juices, and anything else that isn't water. Everything else is full of calories. Especially, alcohol. It's not the sugar that sweetens the drink, the alcohol itself is full of calories.

What about diet soft drinks?

Stop drinking diet pop. Although diet pop has no calories, it still contains sodium. Sodium (salt) is why a lot of us retain water and retain extra pounds. Try to eliminate extra sources of sodium from your diet. You will notice your weight decline. See our sodium chapter.

Note: Diabetics urine may always look clear, even when they are dehydrated.

2. Eat One Third

The whole point of the Alo Diet is to avoid counting calories as much as possible. You should be able to eat as much as you want and to your satisfaction, as long as you eat the right things. However, if you are having problems losing weight and are not making any progress, you can follow the rule of one third.

If you simply take what you normally eat at each meal, and eat only one third of it. You will lose weight. If you want to count calories, eat only one third of your average. You will lose weight. If you don’t want to count calories, fill up your plate, as you normally would, then eat only one third of it. It’s that easy.

3. Wait Twenty Minutes

Waiting twenty minutes allows the stomach to tell the brain that it is full. It takes about twenty minutes for that signal to reach the brain and tell you to that you are full.

4. If you are still hungry, go back and eat another third

After waiting the twenty minutes, if you are still hungry, you can go back and eat another small serving. You should go back and eat one third or less. Wait twenty minutes, then repeat the process. Allow your body time to realize that it is full.

5. No Eating After 7 PM

If you eat late in the evening, your body will use the extra calories to store fat. Most of us start shutting down later in the day, and don't do very many activities or burn very many calories. Hence, eating late and not using those calories, is just excess consumption and will be stored as fat.

The whole idea is to sleep on an empty stomach. It takes about 3 hours for your stomach to empty (diabetics take longer). Food will still be in your intestines, but the stomach is what releases the weight gain hormones. You want your stomach to be completely empty.

One of the simplest Alo Diet rules is to avoid eating after 7PM. Most people are asleep by 10PM, so this is a good time to stop eating. If you sleep at 11PM, change this to 8PM.

If you really feel hungry after 7PM, have some tea, drink a full glass of water, a handful of almonds, a cheese stick, or slice of turkey bacon. Avoid late night carbohydrates at all costs.

Stick to this rule and you will see results.

6. Eat Small, Frequent Meals

Skipping meals and eating one large monstrous meal per day is very bad for you. Eating one large meal leads to excess insulin secretion and the body reacts to insulin by trying to store as much of it as fat. See our previus chapters on digestion and insulin and blood sugar.

Further, starvation in between these large meals tells your body that you are starving. When the body detects huge swings between feast and famine, it decides to try and store as much as possible during times of plenty. That large meal leads to a ton of insulin secretion, a ton of storage, and that tired coma afterwards.

Eating meals that are primarily carbohydrates is even worse. Carbohydrates have a huge glycemic index and will elevate your blood sugar and insulin levels even more.

Eating 1500 calories in five evenly distributed meals of 300 calories throughout the day is much better than one or two large 750 calorie meals.

Further, every time you eat, your body ramps up metabolism. You want to keep your metabolism elevated. Fasting and starvation in between meals causes your body to turn down metabolism, which leads to weight gain and weight storage.

Eating small meals throughout the day prevents the feast or famine response, raises your metabolism, and keeps you burning calories as opposed to trying to store them.